Related

DES MOINES, Iowa — So you didn’t win Wednesday’s $360 million Powerball jackpot? Make that you and everyone else.
A message early Thursday on the multistate lottery’s website said the jackpot has soared to $475 million after none of the tickets sold matched all the winning numbers in Wednesday night’s drawing: 2, 11, 26, 34, 41 and a Powerball of 32.
The next drawing will be held Saturday.

By Simon Johnson
On Friday, Senator Bob Corker (R, TN) took to the Senate floor to rebut critics of big banks. His language was not entirely senatorial: “I hope we’ll all come to our senses”, while listing the reasons we need big banks. And Senator Chris Dodd (D, CT) rose to agree that (in Corker’s words) reducing the size of our largest banks would be “cutting our nose off to spite our face” and that by taking on Wall Street, “we may be taking on the heartland.”

Social media and big data are being used in an innovative new payday loan banking model that’s more Silicon Valley than Wall Street. Most interestingly, the operation seems to have more in common with old-fashioned hometown lenders than today’s giant banks or typical payday loan outfits. When people get nostalgic about community banking, they evoke a time when your bank really knew who you were. The manager knew your name and the tellers would ask how your kids were doing or wish you happy birthday.

Many Facebook users received an email notice last night about a class action lawsuit against the company. This is the same email that went out to some Facebook users last week, but we wanted to mention it again in case there was any confusion.

The two big names in crowdfunding are Kickstarter and Indiegogo, but it turns out that you have plenty of other options that grant you a degree of control over your campaign that the bigger names don't.

Even more so than most cities, Chicago has had the best government money can buy. In this case, the money is willing to engage in a scorched-earth policy of crushing local investors and wrecking the city budget to achieve its end of taming unions and making Chicago even easier pickings for looting via infrastructure sales.